Simone Aliya

Good Enough Simone Aliya

This collection of narrative poems illuminates the life-affirming power of storytelling. Portraying the rough texture of a fictional Vermont community, the author first weaves a tapestry of quirky characters all desperate for human connection. She bases many of these characters on individuals in the town where she went to college in Vermont. Her work at a coffee shop in this town inspired the "human landscape" she sketches at the end of the book. In a café in Vermont, such calloused characters as the ones from the beginning unite. Between the Vermont poems, the author illustrates her experience growing up as a third-generation Holocaust survivor. Crystallizing pain into writing, she emerges from the silence and trauma inherited from her father and grandmother. In another poem, she shares her story of losing a romantic relationship. These two middle pieces reveal language as a means not only of connection, but also of navigating emotions that range from desperation and obsession to faith and love.